Do you remember watching Friday the 13th on TV as a kid? Not the movies, the “TV show!”:http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0092357/ Of course not, nobody does! But all the same, I’ve just re-remembered it and thought I’d share with all my loyal readers! So mom & dad, here you go:
It was totally rad! Which is to say, it was a moderately interesting idea turned lame due to bad writing and acting. But all the same, I did like a lot of episodes. Then again, I was like 12 when it was on the air, so that doesn’t necessarily mean much. And if you think I’m a geek today, man, you should have seen me back then…
So here’s the basic idea – These three people have discovered that an evil family member (uncle to the two cousins, Ryan and Micki, and I’m not sure who he was to the old dude, Jack Marshak) has been selling cursed antiques. Generally speaking, any given item will give the user some kind of crazy special power for the price of killing somebody. There were lots of variations, but I remember most episodes being that way.
Part what made this show truly special was the absurdities of some of the plots: * Wheelchair episode ** Girl gets harassed by a bunch of guys, and apparently near-raped. ** She runs away and is hit by a car, paralyzed. ** She gets this magic wheelchair (s/magic/cursed), and is able to leave her body to get revenge on her aggressors. ** As she kills each person involved, she gains more mobility. Screw “The Scooter Store”:http://www.thescooterstore.com/! ** I think the moral of the story was that murder is bad, even if it happens to bad people. Or something. * Snow globe episode ** Satan captures our three heroes inside… a… snowglobe. WTF? ** He uses damned souls of their friends to lure them in, though I can’t recall exactly how that happens. ** One of the damned friends decides she can’t go through with the betrayal. So she somehow manages to help the trio get a car. ** They drive the car through the edge of the snowglobe, crashing out back to the real world again… ** Satan put them into a breakable container, and left a car there that was in running condition. I think this episode really showcased how stupid Satan really is. * Leather Jacket of Invisibility ** This one’s crazy-awesome – a cursed jacket turns the wearer invisible when they kill people and wipe the blood on the jacket! ** The main plot escapes me at the moment, but I remember they stopped the killer by faking a murder. That is, they let the killer stab one of the main characters, but the dude was wearing a fake pack of blood on his chest that stopped the knife while making him appear dead. This ploy somehow caught the killer offguard even though he was still holding the knife he used to kill people, and let the heroes stop him.
The other really great thing about the show was the intro. First, we get to hear what I recall as cool, creepy music. In all honesty, I was pretty geeky so the intro probably sucked… but we got to see a cymbal-playing monkey!
Then there was the cast. Three names (the three main characters of course), two of which I don’t remember (Ryan and Jack’s characters). Micki, I remember – she was billed simply as “Robey”. I always found that funny, and more so today, because she’s some nobody who really never made it big. Trying to make herself into one of those stars with just one name…. It’s just so pathetic and yet so funny.